Unless Apple changes its rules, Facebook won’t have a Home on iOS

Apple's requirements for third-party apps will keep Facebook in its sandbox.

Facebook finally unveiled its long-speculated "Facebook phone" on Thursday in the form of the HTC First, but the phone was actually the least important part of the announcement. More importantly, Facebook revealed an entirely new piece of software called Facebook Home that will be available for an array of popular Android handsets next week: Samsung's Galaxy S III, S 4, and Note II, and HTC's One, One X, and One X+. Support for other Android handsets (and, eventually, tablets) will follow in the coming months.

One of the inquiries at the post-event Q&A session asked an obvious question: will Facebook Home support iOS?

"We do have an active dialogue to do more with them but anything that happens with Apple will happen through partnership with them," said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the press conference. "Google is aware of what we're doing, but Android is a more open system so we don't have to work directly with them to build this experience."

In short, Apple's phones won't be getting Facebook Home any time soon. If you're familiar with how each operating system works, this should come as no surprise. But if you aren't, a brief explanation may be in order.

“Open” versus “closed”

The word "open" is thrown around by so many people and in so many contexts that it can basically mean anything you want it to mean. In the case of Android and iOS, the distinction is simple: Android's source code is freely available to those who would like to download and tinker with it, and iOS' is not. Android also allows end users to customize things like their keyboard and app launchers, while Apple opts not to in the name of simplicity and consistency.

iOS does allow you to download and run any software you want from Apple's App Store, but even those apps come with restrictions (some obvious and some less so). Third-party apps aren't allowed to communicate directly with one another, for example (you can't use the Facebook app to post a photo stored in Dropbox), and apps can generally only interact with third-party services that Apple explicitly supports (you can post a photo from the Photos app to Twitter or Facebook, but not to Google+).

Finally, third-party apps aren't given the same level of access to the OS as first-party apps: mobile Safari can use Apple's beefed-up Nitro Javascript engine, but Google's Chrome for iOS can't access it or use its own rendering engine (a slower, Nitro-less version of the browser engine is used in it and all third-party apps that load webpages).

Want to change the way your phone looks and acts? You're going to need Android.

Andrew Cunningham

Android, on the other hand, lets third parties modify the user experience pretty much however they want—Google has loose requirements for phones that provide access to the Google Play store and the Google Android apps, but otherwise anything goes. Android browsers can use their own rendering engines. The Gallery app can upload photos through any app that tells the Gallery app that it is capable of uploading files (a system called "intents"). Phone makers, carriers, and users can all install basically any application launcher, keyboard, or app that they want.

This is the "open"-ness that Facebook is taking advantage of in order to make Facebook Home work. Home itself is essentially an application launcher that changes the way your phone looks and acts without actually modifying the core Android OS, which will also allow Facebook to keep Home updated without having to clear the updates with a carrier first. Because of how Home works, basically any Android phone can become a Facebook phone as long as it's supported, and the company doesn't have to worry about the fragmentation headaches, vastly different UIs between phones from different manufacturers, and other inconsistencies that plague the platform.

Because of all of this, Home in its current incarnation can't move away from Android to most other platforms, either. Both Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 have the interfaces and app launchers that they have, and there aren't any mechanisms by which a third-party application could dig its hooks in as deeply as Home does on Android. Without coding a completely separate operating system, then, Android is the only platform that can support Home at all.

Never say never?

Android exclusivity doesn't necessarily doom Facebook Home to failure—Android's worldwide smartphone market share exceeds that of its competition, so the number of potential users out there is high regardless of whether Home comes to iOS or any other platform. It just means that Home as it was shown off today is not a thing that can exist on iOS in the same way that it can exist on Android.

None of that is to say that Home can't evolve or change for iOS, though. Zuckerberg did say that Facebook's relationship with Apple was good, and Apple doesn't have a dog in the social networking fight the way Google does with Google+. The third-party Facebook app for iOS could pick up some of Home's easier-to-port features, and Apple could deepen the native Facebook integration in future versions of iOS (the current level of integration was just introduced in iOS 6, so it could be the first step in a longer journey).

However, Home in its current form simply can't come to iOS (or Windows Phone, or BlackBerry 10) unless Apple drastically changes how it deals with third-party applications. But given that Apple has been bringing many of its existing rules over to its historically more-flexible desktop OS in recent releases (instead of the other way around), we wouldn't count on that happening any time soon.

Indeed. Does anyone besides Zuckerberg want this thing? I mean I'm sure there are those people out there that live and breath every moment of their life on Facebook, but this seems like a silly piece of software.

And I'm not coming from an anti-Facebook stance. I use the service and keep up with people on it. But to wrap my phone in it is absurd.

People on here seem quick to write this off, but it'd be at least nice to have the option to have stuff like this on the iPhone, even if this Facebook Home thing doesn't seem particularly compelling to me right now (not so much that I wouldn't want it to be hidden behind an icon instead of placed in front of them at least).

Both Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry 10 have the interfaces and app launchers that they have, and there aren't any mechanisms by which a third-party application could dig its hooks in as deeply as Home does on Android. Without coding a completely separate operating system, then, Android is the only platform that can support Home at all.

We'll see how this all goes. If FB Home actually gains traction and people love it to death, it could be something that Apple needs to worry about as a killer feature/app that they won't be getting.

Since it's Facebook, I find that very unlikely to happen, but you never know. If people are already fine with iOS's cluttered and limited home screen I don't see this type of thing compelling them to seek change.

On iOS apps can't directly access data from another app, but the user can transfer a copy of something to another app if this app accepts this kind of data.

As with many limitations in iOS this is something you will hate when you want to do something you can't do then, but you just love it when an app can't do something you don't want it to be allowed to in the first place.

The thought of having a Facebook app (or launcher or lockscreen) that just has to state what it wants to do in a file and then can happily do whatever it wants isn't necessarily a good one.

I'm a bit torn about this, but for an appliance I tend to think of tight control as a good thing (to a certain extent) while for "computers" I wouldn't accept it.

I'm really curious what permissions that Facebook app will require to install on Android. I guess just about everything. And what's with the phones that come pre-installed with this? And what if you want the phone and don't have a Facebook account anyway?

If I want to do Facebook then I want to go open a Facebook app - if that's even necessary, since it works fine on the web. I don't want Facebook integration. I don't even like Facebook integration in iOS6. I just have no time for or interest in sharing the boring, mundane stuff on my phone. If there ever is something that interesting that the world has to know then it probably won't have been in my calendar (because I wasn't going to forget it anyway) and I'll tell people mostly by talking to them. Or if I have to, I'll go to facebook.com.

Reminds me of the fake radio ads in Grand Theft Auto - "Wow, now I can check my email in the shower!"

What's with all the calls for Dropbox integration? Last I checked, there were already APIs to allow applications to use it for storage, and I use the application itself all the time for sideloading ePubs and other documents.

With FB's myriad opportunities to share your info and be informed of others', it's difficult to understand why any dedicated "Home" scenario could bring you anycloser to just having the web page open 24/7 as your wallpaper.

Sandboxed iOS app? Not in my experience.

When I had the Facebook iOS app I'd get notifications when all notifications were turned off. Verifying that the local settings weren't permitting this I had to use a web browser to adjust some account settings. And even those didn't stick.

I tried force-quitting the iOS app but it didn't matter. Only deleting it worked. And this was all before it got integrated logins with iOS6.

I would never install Facebook home but "Intents" and "Broadcast receivers" are things that Apple can borrow for iOS.

Just install Instapaper or Dropbox and any application can share to them without having to code anything

Every app that uses the "Open in..." feature can open a file/document in any app that supports the file type. I can happily open an attachment from within the mail app in Dropbox and save it there, without mail knowing anything about Dropbox or having to support it in any special way.

It's different from what Android does but it's not that you can't share from apps to Dropbox (or Evernote or whatever) in iOS.

I'm a bit torn about this, but for an appliance I tend to think of tight control as a good thing (to a certain extent) while for "computers" I wouldn't accept it.

I don't really make such a distinction. A phone is just a computer with Skype installed. A mobile phone is a computer with Skype installed that fits in my pocket. I wouldn't want restrictions on my pocket-sized computer any more than I would want them on my desktop or laptop.

I'm not really interested in this, or any other Facebook app. I have a web browser, Facebook has a web page, problem solved.

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.